Sing Out This Song: Moulin Rouge Vignettes
by zeldazonk
Summary: A series of vignettes during the key musical moments of the movie. Come What May and Show Must Go On (final) up now.
1. Your Song: Satine

A/N: A little idea that popped into my head one night. Here before you will be a collection of vignettes from different character's POV during key musical moments in Moulin Rouge. Some have been excluded for various reasons.  
  
  
  
Part I: Your Song (Satine)  
  
  
  
What is wrong with him? Why isn't he responding to my advances? They always do. But not this one. He stands there, looking very uncomfortable and very innocent, staring at me like I'm some wild jungle cat.  
  
Which, I suppose, he has a right to think. I am rolling on the floor wrapped in the blankets, screaming and howling like some seductive tigress. "Oh! Give me more!" I howl, raking my nails through the fur.  
  
He fumbles for his words, face turning redder than the Red Room itself, and then turns his back to me. Staring out upon moon-bathed Paris, he begins to sing.  
  
"My gift is my song!"  
  
Suddenly, as though his voice is a current of electricity, all the lights in my beloved city turn on. The Eiffel Tower is lit up like a thousand stars are laced through it. I stop for a moment, hanging on his words. The strains of his magnificent voice linger on the heated air. "And this one's for you," the young man sings softly, turning to face me. "And you can tell everybody that this is your song."  
  
Oh, my God. Here I am, wrapped up like an Eskimo in my furs, staring like an enraptured child. He must think I'm crazy. But here he is, standing before me, singing his song. "It may be quite simple now that it's done." Am I dreaming? Is this lovely young man singing to me? Satine, the insane courtesan with a penchant for diamonds and champagne?  
  
I stare into his clear blue eyes for a moment, wondering what he's thinking. I can see myself reflected there, and something foreign astounds me. Is this the light of love in his eyes? Does this young Duke love me? Well, I'm used to "love." Men always claim to "love" me.  
  
"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put down in words how wonderful life is now you're in the world!"  
  
I think I may have turned to stone. I cannot move; I can only blink. I'm hanging on his every word and my mouth hangs open, awaiting the next glorious notes of his splendid tenor to spill forth into the night. The fur robe drops to the ground in my amazement.  
  
Now, grinning to display even teeth, albeit British teeth, he continues. "Sat on the roof, and I kicked off the moss. Some of these verses, well, they got me quite cross. But the sun's been kind while I wrote this song. It's for people like you that keep it turned on."  
  
For me! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he's written this for me? Christ, now what have I gotten myself into? I need someone to pinch me; where's Nini when one needs her?  
  
His handsome face is alight with happiness when I allow him to take my hands and pull me close. Upon inhaling, I detect smoke, soap, and Absinthe, warm bohemian scents I've come to be used to. "Excuse my forgetting, but these things I do," he sings, making my diamond hard courtesan heart pound against my will. "You see, I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue. And, well, the thing is, what I really mean, is that yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen!"  
  
And now what is happening? In my dazed state, I seem to be floating on air, dancing on cerulean fluffy clouds, showered with glitter. ""You can tell everybody that this is your song! It may be quite simple now that it's done. I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put down in words how wonderful life is now you're in the world!" Triumphantly he serenades me, whirling me about, sending exquisite feelings from my heart to my brain.  
  
Did someone put absinthe in my punch tonight? Seriously. I know the stars do not sing along with the operatic moon. I know that you cannot fly across the tops of Paris, dance across the sky.  
  
Why are we doing it then, pray tell? Why am I laughing and beaming like a lovestruck schoolgirl, making doe eyes at this singing and dancing duke?  
  
Music and starlight have gone to my head. I think I've gone completely mad.  
  
"You can tell everybody that this is your song! It may be quite simple now that it's done. I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put down in words how wonderful life is now you're in the world."  
  
Oh, thank God, we're back inside the elephant. I have an oddly giddy sensation tingling throughout my whole body, a floating, flying feeling. He's got me in his arms, his pretty lips dangerously close to mine. Christ, don't let me . . .  
  
Oh, hell, I've fallen in love already.  
  
Please call the doctor, for I've gone insane.  
  
Do you want to know something very odd? I like it. 


	2. Spectacular, Spectacular: Duke

Spectacular, Spectacular (The Duke)  
  
A/N: Part 2 in my Moulin-song-POV fics!  
  
Well, I am quite the lucky one, sitting in on the so-called "emergency rehearsal" for the "truly Bohemian spectacle" that these odd people are putting on.  
  
They are likely the strangest people I've met. The dark one, the one with the slurred voice and mustache, keeps clunking to the floor after a dramatic crossing of his eyes. When he awakens from his sudden slumber, a stream of curse words to the likes I've never heard fall from his Spanish lips.  
  
The bald one at the piano with his bizarre voice gives me chills, and the befuddled looking man with the straggly beard (he should groom that; he looks like a street person!) looks at me with piercing eyes.  
  
The little man with the loud lisp and short legs is so exuberant that I am frightened. Shouldn't he be in a home for those people, locked away where nobody can see his deformed body? But no, he stands in my presence, drinking glass after glass of that horrid absinthe.  
  
And the writer (Christian, is it?), well, they haven't warped him yet. An innocent looking boy, handsome, but no contest to my looks. He's standing quite close to my Satine, looking at her strangely. The boy's probably infatuated with her, but everyone knows she is enamored of me.  
  
Ah, Satine. How out of place she is with these "Bohemians." Why, she should be wearing wings and a halo, for truly she is an angel. Once I get her out of this horrid place, she will wear only the finest clothing, attend teas with only the finest people, live an upper class life with me at her side. I will be the envy of all France, all London. (So will she, having captured such a prize as myself!)  
  
Oh, I'm trying to hide my distaste for this madcap performance they're putting forth. What is this disaster? Spectacular, Spectacular? Why, it's madcap cow dung! The courtesan and the penniless sitar player conducting their affair under the eyes of the maharajah? Preposterous, indeed! What woman wants love when she can have money, protection?  
  
I shall smile and make them believe I'm actually enjoying this. Why, it's awful! And Harold? That plump jolly man with his pink cheeks and his hair that is definitely NOT a natural color is making me nauseous with his talk of investing. Me, invest in this?  
  
Just as I think I will get up and leave the place, I notice Satine. She gives off blue sparks of her electric life light, far outshining anyone in the room, the Moulin Rouge, the city, the country, the continent, the world. How could one so beautiful be in a place like this, this gutter- trash filth hole? Her eyes are on me, and I smile, basking in the glory of my good looks.  
  
But that writer . . .he looks at her with something starry, something like love in his eyes. No! She doesn't love him, surely he knows that. She loves me! The Duke of Monroth, with my fortune and fifteen horses and manservant and, of course, my handsomeness. There is not one man in all of England who captivates women as I do. I've captivated the infamous Sparkling Diamond of the Moulin Rouge, so certainly I must be something!  
  
What are they doing? Oh, yes, I see now. They're acting out the play. "The courtesan and sitar man are pulled apart by an evil plan . . ." sings the writer, pulling open the curtain to show Satine and that Argentinean in each other's arms.  
  
"But in the end, she hears his song!" Rings out the angelic voice of Satine, looking at that writer boy and then quickly looking away.  
  
"And their love is just too strong."  
  
Moved by this display, I sing! "It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside." My voice is splendid! Why did I not participate in choirs?  
  
"The sitar player's secret song helps deplete the evil one!" The writer informs me in song.  
  
Oh, there's jolly Harold, trying to be menacing.  
  
"And in the end, should someone die?" I ask. The Bohemians and Satine end their impromptu performance with an elaborate, quickly pulled together pose, all looking at me for my reaction.  
  
I suppose I shall invest in this calamity, for the sake of my Satine. I'm sure it fall in ruins around my feet, but I will do so anyway.  
  
"Generally, I like it."  
  
They all cheer, and the writer hugs Satine like a lovesick puppy dog. Oh, you silly boy. Don't you realize? She is mine. 


	3. One Day I'll Fly Away: Nini

One Day I'll Fly Away (Nini)  
  
One day you'll fly away, sweetheart? Oh, Satine, you're a dreamer. Don't we all want the same thing as you? Weren't we lured here by promise of wealth, clothing, food, and maybe even love? Don't we all want to escape the Moulin Rouge? You're not special, Satine.  
  
You don't know that I'm listening to you. You think I'm upstairs at Toulouse's studio, getting screwed by Chocolat or the Argentinean or someone; there is someone new every night for me to fuck, isn't there? Same with you. You're no better than I am. Let's face it, Satine, we're both whores.  
  
"One day I'll fly away, leave all this to yesterday." You sing. I'm not going to lie; you do have a spectacular voice, a pretty face.  
  
I suppose that is why Harry put you first, isn't it? You're the all-around talented whore at the Moulin Rouge. You can sing, dance, and give a man his money's worth, right? Well, can't I do the same thing? I'm tired, Satine, tired of being the second choice, lurking in your shadow all the time.  
  
We started out the same way. Both of us were poverty-stricken young girls, hungry, sick from living on the cold streets of Paris. We were even friends! Do you remember that, Satine? We banded together, Satine and Nini against the world.  
  
So now when I tell myself I hate you, my mind wanders to those days when it was just you and me, trying to survive. I try to keep in mind how close we were then, and how innocent. It was before Harold Zidler, before the Moulin Rouge, before the Sparkling Diamond and the Diamond Dog were split apart by money, greed, and jealousy.  
  
"Why live life from dream to dream and dread the day when dreaming ends?"  
  
Dreaming's ended, Satine. How can we dream of better things when there's nothing else for us in the world but prostituting our bodies to men? I stopped dreaming several years ago. It wasn't worth it anymore. I'm going to waste my good days at the Moulin, high-kicking and drinking until I end up like Marie. So will you. By the time we escape this place, we'll be old, undesirable. We who were beautiful and wanted, paid for, will become street women, faded images of what we used to be.  
  
I hate you for that. I hate that you will probably be taken away from here to live with someone who loves you or at least will provide for you, and I'll stay, wishing it were me. I'll grow old and diseased and drink myself to death.  
  
People will never remember Nini-Legs-in-the-Air after she's gone, for Nini- Legs-in-the-Air was always in the shadow of the great Satine.  
  
I hate you for that, too! You greedy bitch, taking my rightful place in the spotlight, bewitching and fucking men I should have been bewitching and fucking!  
  
"One day I'll fly away; fly, fly away." You look out over the Moulin Rouge, towards the starlit city of Paris, wistfully. I can feel your longing to leave, for that feeling is in my soul, too. It's painful, isn't it? I know exactly how you're feeling, for still we're Sisters of the Underworld.  
  
You are my sister, not by blood but by feeling. We're so alike, and no one sees it. I hide my true self behind the icy wall and bitchy demeanor, but truly, I long for love just as you do.  
  
I cannot hate you. 


	4. Come What May: Toulouse

"Never knew I could feel like this."  
  
With those seven little words, Christian changed all our lives forever.  
  
"Like I've never seen the sky before."  
  
That song, their secret song, was the key to a whole world that only Christian and Satine could inhabit. Everything in that world was surrounded with a warm, pinkish glow, the glow of their fresh, new love. A love that would live forever, simply because it was beautiful.  
  
So beautiful, in fact, that it made my heart ache each time I saw them together. Which was frequently, because they used my studio as their hideaway, a place where they didn't have to hide what they truly felt for one another. "Want to vanish inside your kiss; every day I love you more and more."  
  
I, too, wanted to vanish inside their love. I was insufferably jealous of both, for they had something so seemingly unattainable to me. Each time I saw their lips meet in a secret kiss, a pang shot straight through to my heart. "Listen to my heart, can you heart it sing; Telling me to give you everything? Seasons may change, winter to spring. But I love you until the end of time."  
  
They were masterful at their craft. Christian was an actor to rival Satine; he hid his feelings so well almost nobody knew. I don't know how they did it. It was so apparent to me, an artist very well versed in the human nature. But everyone else, especially the Duke, was oblivious.  
  
"Come what may." Three simple words full of meaning, full of all the love Christian and Satine contained for one another. "I will love you until my dying day."  
  
It was true. For until Satine's dying day, she remained true to her promise. What undying love such a person can have for another! Magic, it truly was.  
  
"Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place," sang the jaded courtesan, the happiest she'd been in her whole life. "Suddenly, it moves with such a perfect grace. Suddenly, my life doesn't seem such a waste." Love. Oh, love. I watched with my all-seeing eyes, for I am more than a drunken gnome who notices nothing. No, I am far more perceptive. I see truth, freedom. But above all things, I see beauty and love. And Christian and Satine, they conveyed both. Small gestures; a touch of hands, a capture of eyes that spoke a thousand words. No one else noticed. No one but I. And I would keep their secret for as long as was needed, because I loved them both.  
  
Love had changed Satine's whole existence. Now, she had something, someone, to love her, to teach her that she was worth a millionfold more than the diamonds she collected each night, the money thrown at her feet for her sexual favors to waning libidos. She was far more beautiful with the power of Christian's love, and I was amazed that something so simple could have such wonderful repercussions on a person. "It all revolves around you. And there's no mountain too high, no river to wide. Sing out this song and I'll be there by your side! Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide but I love you until the end of time."  
  
Damn that Duke, who thought she was in love with him. How could she be? We all hated him, save for Zidler. Satine was only a pawn in Zidler's twisted game of chess, easily overtaken by power. The Duke believed those words she was singing were meant for him, and each time I saw that rabbity face beaming with joy anger boiled within my Bohemian veins. I, like the others, wanted true love to prevail. And we knew it would, eventually. For true love would surpass greed, jealousy, and even death.  
  
Looking back now, I see the resonance in those words. I hear, "Come what may. I will love you until my dying day" every time Christian speaks her name. I hear those words in the back of my mind as I paint and watch myself fade slowly away. They will be forever cemented in the walls of the decaying Moulin Rouge, a haunting reminder of what was and what will be. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. 


	5. The Show Must Go On: Harold

A/N: The final "song-fic" in the series. I feel the others (Roxanne, finale, et al) are too over-written, so this, The Show Must Go On, will be the last.  
  
"I'm dying." Her voice, nothing more than a hoarse, disbelieving whisper. It chills me completely, down to my soul. "I was a fool to believe; a fool to believe. It all ends today. . .yes, it all ends today. . ."  
  
Listening to that brief moment of choked words spewed forth in song, my throat tightens. I exploited that voice, that talent, that beauty, and in the end, in truth, it was I who killed Satine. "The show must go on, Satine. We're creatures of the underworld. We can't afford to love."  
  
Marie's eyes catch mine and in that short glance memories spring into both our minds. We, too, loved the way Christian and Satine do. But nothing, nothing lasts forever. It ended, just as Satine will end her little romance. "Today's a day . . ." Satine's voice wreaks havoc on my conscience. "When dreaming ends." Her eyes, crystal-blue and full of tears, avoid mine and shoot daggers into my blackening heart. She looks more fragile than a baby kitten, a dying butterfly. Butterflies look beautiful, give great pleasure, but live such a short time . . .  
  
I leave her there, thinking it best to let my little sparrow sing her song in peace, collect the fragments of her shattered heart. "Another hero, another mindless crime. Behind the curtain, in the pantomime." With each word, I feel my own soul crack a little more. "On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?"  
  
I can't help but think what would have come of Satine had I not tampered with her fate the way I just had. She would have run away with him and lived happily for a while, but death comes swiftly. Only Satine would have died happy, and here she will die alone. She will never feel the warmth of his love again. I hate myself. I have killed everything she wanted, everything that mattered to her. I did so when she came into my life, prostituting her body for the satisfaction of money in my pocket. "Whatever happened? We leave it all to chance; another heartache, another failed romance. On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?"  
  
My voice breaks suddenly when I utter the words, "The show must go on! The show must go on!"  
  
When the curtain rises on Spectacular, Spectacular, it will change the course of our lives forever. Satine's. Mine. Marie's. The Duke's. "Outside the dawn is breaking on the stage that holds our final destiny. The show must go on!"  
  
The stage does hold Satine's final destiny. There she was born and there shall she die. If not of her terrible illness, then by life with the Duke. Oh, Harold, what have you done? You are slowly killing her, much more violently than her sickness. Consumption ravages her lungs, but you, you are ravaging her heart.  
  
I hear her voice.  
  
"Inside, my heart is breaking. My makeup may be flaking but my smile stays on." How much pain Satine can convey with words. I know exactly what she is feeling, how torn she is. She is torn between love and success, and only one can come out on top.  
  
Oh, there she stands, silhouetted against the rosy-pink-orange of dawn! Look at my strawberry, standing tall and proud! She's going now, going to save us all. "I'll top the bill! I'll earn the kill! I have to find the will to carry on!" "On with the show!"  
  
The show must go on, and to save us all Satine will sacrifice herself. 


End file.
